The Death of Cinema pt. 94

I posted that way the hell upthread but it's behind the "more messages" now.

yeah that's what kicked off this revive

Yeah, I don't get that at all because how the fuck are the hard drives they send out even writeable?

Ever since cable and the VCR arrived, the profit in archiving has been obvious. I'm pretty sure this will continue.

― Aimless, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 12:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

its probably less obvious in the age of internet piracy?

lol, we don't need profit now, we have people running torrent-seeding systems for scene "cred" or for ratio

From a CNET article it looks like that Avengers screening booboo was because it had been downloaded, rather than sent as a disk, so it's feasible that someone could delete it from the DCP server by accident I guess.

On a thread related note, this blog entry about the benefits of digital distribution for small-time filmmakers is quite an interesting read. Some good snaps of a typical DCP set up too:

http://wearecapture.com/blog/?p=238

Two years from now (or less) the studios aren't even gonna be sending out film prints.

Eerie.

http://news.doddleme.com/news-room/and-so-it-begins-20th-century-fox-to-end-film-distribution/

Getting ready to make up crazy facts about film projection for the grandkids.

So, everyone saw Hugo in digital projection, right?

caught a glimpse of what looked like a windows 98 desktop for a split second after I saw the raid: redemption yesterday, lol

in a chain theater

David Bordwell on James Cameron's presumptive agenda:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/04/22/its-good-to-be-the-king-of-the-world/

Off topic, but this quote:

Second, if these guys are so passionately committed to quality, why don’t they make better movies?

caught a glimpse of what looked like a windows 98 desktop for a split second after I saw the raid: redemption yesterday, lol

― (⊙_⊙?) (Alan N), Monday, May 7, 2012 11:22 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ive seen that a few times. also when i saw A Separation, the first 5 minutes or so played without subtitles because the projectionist forgot to turn them on - like when you're watching a DVD.

yeah for some reason i thought that bordwell article had been posted. its good, but i still cant muster any sympathy for the conscience-free big chain exhibitors who have been bilking theatergoers ever since the multiplex era began. i mean at fucking cinemacon this year the big chains were batting around ideas about allowing texting during movies to lure in teenage customers. there is no low they won't stoop to in the name of profits. of course, independent theaters are getting shafted by cameron's 'all stick' approach too...

Chris Nolan, defender of celluloid:

http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/film-tv/35-mm-film-digital-Hollywood/

third time's the charm

haha, sorry, didn't see it until I showed the hidden posts. mea culpa

THE MOVIE VANISHES

http://youtu.be/EL_g0tyaIeE

http://www.quora.com/Pixar-Animation-Studios/Did-Pixar-accidentally-delete-Toy-Story-2-during-production/answer/Oren-Jacob

They almost lost 2 months worth of work, but then they redid everything anyway so it wouldn't have mattered. Still scary.

i should also point out that it incredible that

rm -rf *

it's

it's not a problem, it's a valid operation - you can't remove the ability to delete stuff, or change how it works.

decent permissions will stop anyone being able to delete anything but their own files (yeah, ok, that can be catastrophic enough).

tbf Orson Welles lost two whole reels of footage when he ran out of desk space and set them on top of the trash can and the janitor threw them out

I think he actually misplaced them in a pizza box

I think he actually ate them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rm_(Unix)

A command so dangerous shouldn't be so easy to use. This page has a bunch of different solutions, which most linux distributions don't use.

most of those (3) solutions won't work with the above because of the fact that it explicitly used -f to force removal. and the Protection of the filesystem root doesn't apply because it's not necessarily /

(ubuntu enforces -i by default, i think. but that's dangerous as it just leads to people typing -f by rote, to bypass all the y y y y y y y y that needs doing if you're deleting more than one file)

backups.

tbf Windows has the same issue, it's just that no one uses the command line

I have, in the past, had the charming habit of holding down shift while deleting in Windows to do a real delete all the time, though.

Backups!

oh, a digital troubleshooting thread! let's kill cinema now.

decent source control is probably the first step though. more difficult with large binary files (textures) but...

=D

so there's a new doc opening in a few cities and playing on VOD where Keanu interviews filmmakers about the digital changeover! Plenty for Lucas- and Cameron-haters to chew on.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/side-by-side/6454

I'm interested in seeing that, actually. Do you know when it's available on VOD?

week from Wednesday.

http://sidebysidethemovie.com/

It covers a lot of the issues discussed above, esp re archiving toward the end, but often in "It's like this / No it's not" fashion.

morbs did you read david bordwell's 'pandora's digital book,' its great

dude, the last 'serious' book I read was Nixonland and it took me a year.

it's a quick read!

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/05/17/pandoras-digital-book/

and i guarantee more insight than keanu reeves' documentary.

some outtakes from that doc here

http://www.tribecafilm.com/videos/?sortBy=-startDate&11963=1030576

Neil Young: "Once there was a friend of mine/who died a thousand deaths." (Haven't read this yet, haven't decided if I will.)

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/is_movie_culture_dead/

"there's a lot of handwringing about the death of cinema so here is an article where i handwring about the death of the cinema."

really it's just a blender of TV IS MORE DISSCUSSED and that NYFF doesn't matter anymore and the cultural elites don't dictate the wider discussion

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-hungry-hungry-hippos-action-man-monopoly-movie-20121004,0,4066248.story

Just noticed that our Landmark franchise here--which resides in perhaps Houston's last movie palace that actually still shows movies--has gone all digital for new releases.

Hungry Hungry Hippos, which debuted in 1978, is a game in which players compete with plastic hippos to swallow marbles off of a board.

shit i've been playing it wrong

ha

My twitter feed these days has basically become a daily report of digital/DLP critics' screenings gone awry.

do tell!

Every day, digital/DLP critics' screenings go awry.

haha

great story